Prior art inverter technologies for converting DC at voltages exceeding 20 KV to AC power include Mercury vapor tubes and solid state devices. Both technologies have drawbacks that would be desirable to avoid.
Mercury vapor tubes have the drawback of being environmentally dangerous if the mercury vapor in the tubes escapes into the environment. Solid state devices have the drawback of comprising large banks of many parallel connected, solid state devices such as thyristors (e.g., silicon-controlled rectifiers). Apart from the cost factor and complications of requiring many parallel-connected devices, reliability is reduced because the probability of one of many component devices failing greatly exceeds the probability of a single device failing—assuming the failure rate per device is the same.
It would be desirable to provide a high voltage inverter including the function of converting DC power to AC power that can have a low number of parts, exhibits high reliability, and is not environmentally dangerous.